The Autism-Vaccines Myth: The Impact of the Media

As I blogged abut last week (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/radical-behaviorist/201001/dishonest...), one of the studies touted as evidence that vaccines cause autism was brought into question by the General Medical Council's (GMC) ruling that Andrew Wakefield had acted dishonestly and without the approval of an ethics committee. Subsequent to my post The Lancet officially retracted the study, largely as a result of GMC's findings. In this post, I'd like to tackle some of the issues surrounding the media's coverage of this topic.

A close reading of the published article may suggest that regressive autism and severe bowel problems could possibly be associated with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine but it was explicitly stated that this study did not establish a causal association between these variable (Wakefield et al., 1998). It is likely that peer review required the authors to state that their study did not prove a link between MMR and autism. However, after the study was published, Wakefield reported to the media that his work strongly suggested that there was a causal link between MMR and autism. The press conference was televised and many media outlets uncritically presented Wakefield's proclamation despite the fact that his published research contradicted his words. Wakefield has held press conferences since then to present unpublished research, and to claim that the UK released the MMR vaccine without properly testing it.

This set in motion a rapid decrease in the vaccination of children against these diseases that was reversed as the result of Brian Deer's investigative journalism that revealed Wakefield had been paid a large sum of money by a group seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers before conducting his research (for full details on this scandal go to; http://briandeer.com/mmr-lancet.htm). Clearly, the media can serve to protect the public interest but more often than not they fail to do so.

Brent Taylor and colleagues reported an interesting and unsettling finding related to the impact of the MMR controversy. In Taylor et al. (2002), multiple parental interviews were obtained for many children diagnosed with an ASD about when they noticed the onset of autistic symptoms. A review of each individual case was made. It was found that several parents reported different times of the onset of autistic symptoms in different interviews. "A review of each record showed that in 13 children the history given by the parents had changed after the extensive publicity about MMR vaccine and autism. Before the publicity the parents often reported concerns early in their child's life, usually before their first birthday; the current history for the same children recorded symptoms as developing only after MMR vaccination, in some cases shortly after. This bias associated with changes in the history given by the parents necessitates particular care when interpreting [parental report]" (Taylor et al., 2002).

Andrews et al. (2002) found that parents of children with autism diagnosed after the MMR controversy was publicized in the media were more likely to report the onset of autism as just after MMR vaccination than were parents of children with autism diagnosed before the controversy. The impact of the media's coverage of this issue has had a significant and detrimental influence. Unfortunately, highly improbable events, extraordinary claims implying a conspiracy, and steadfast beliefs with little support beyond anecdote tend to given more coverage than sound information based upon empirically valid and peer reviewed research.

"I am absolutely certain that environmental factors are 100 percent responsible for the rise in the autism rate. Mercury and vaccines are among the primary suspects," said Cambridge resident Mark Blaxill, director of SafeMinds, a leading nonprofit founded to investigate and publicize claims that mercury in medical products poses risks to kids... "Andy is a fine man and a terrific scientist," said Blaxill, whose daughter has autism. "This is nothing more than a very well organized and systematic effort to intimidate and suppress the science."

In a statement about the retraction, the CDC cited an "overwhelming body of research by the world's leading scientists that concludes there is no link between MMR vaccine and autism."

The reporter who wrote this story is following a well worn path tread by many media outlets. The coverage of this story on CNN also demonstrates the point/counter-point style. Though it is preferable to referring to Wakefield as this generation's Galileo, it is not thorough coverage of the story (see Brian Deer's work as a refreshing example of thorough coverage). Just a little searching of medical journals and public records would reveal compelling evidence that there is no credibility to the Wakefield MMR myth.

Research conducted by Brent Taylor at The Royal Free and University College Medical School, where Wakefield and colleagues conducted their work, contradicts the assertion made by Wakefield that the MMR was associated with a higher probability of gastrointestinal problems (Taylor, Miller, Lingam, Andrews, Simmons, & Stowe, 2002). They reviewed the medical records of over 400 persons with autism and found that there was no increased prevalence of bowels problem or regression following the introduction of the MMR vaccine in London in 1979.

In my post linked to above, I discussed research showing that measles was not more likely to be found in the bodies of children with ASDs than in typically developing children. There was also the testimony in the Autism Omnibus proceeding of the world's foremost authority on the research method used in the Wakefield study, Stephen Bustin. He described how the Wakefield results were the product of contamination (transcripts from the Autism Omnibus proceeding can be accessed here; http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/189/). There should have been measles RNA in the samples but there was only DNA. So, the Wakefield results were, in fact, not positive for measles from the MMR vaccine they were positive for measles introduced into the lab by the investigators. This was confirmed in the Autism Omnibus proceedings by the testimony of Nicholas Chadwick who worked in Wakefield's lab. He stated that they found no positive results for the measles virus found in the MMR during the study and that he informed Wakefield of this.

This, in combination with numerous other studies showing no relation between the MMR vaccine and ASDs (e.g., Dales, Hammer, & Smith, 2001; Fombonne & Chakrabarti, 2001; Kaye, del Mare Melero-Montes, & Jick, 2001; Honda, Shimzu, & Rutter, 2005; Mrozek-Budzyn, Kieltyka, & Majewska, 2009), provides fairly definitive evidence against the "MMR causes autism" hypothesis. Not doing the investigative end of journalism is lazy and the results of sloppy reporting that then appears in the media is just as culpable as those intentionally propagating the vaccines cause autism myth.

Here's more proof of the witch hunt this has been. The good doctor has been black balled by special interests and words now coming out, big time.

Polly is just one witness who's been threaened with the closing of her magazine should she publish or associate with Dr. Wakefield as she has in the past. Polly tells of others, too, who have been threatened in the same manner.

She says she won't be bullied. Those who have been doing the bullying are soon to be exposed & facing their day in court as soon as this whole matter gets to the high court as promised here;

People are painting signs everywhere that say, "Google,"Truth about vaccinations"

I had a friend that saw one a while back that was painted on a bridge that went across the expressway.

How great is that? People are educating others on the streeats now instead of just in cyberspace so it won't be long now until justice is done & the guilty involved in the cover up have to face the music.

The message is people should not label others anti-vax as Bill & others have been doing here.

People commenting & debating in the many blogs here in cyberspace aren't all anti-vax but know something's up & they want answers. It isn't fair to label them all anti-vax.

I'm not anti-vax, either. Not yet. I am leaning that way due to the track record I'm researching & learning about, though.

One commenter put it well & in nut shell & I'm borrowing it because it hits the nail on the head perfectly.

"You can have people take vaccination against serious disease seriously.

Or, you can sell people dangerous and unnecessary vaccines against less dangerous illnesses and have people lose all faith in vaccination.

You can't have both."

Yes, I lean towards becoming anti-vaccine but the verdict isn't in yet because I want to believe they have done some good. I know vaccinations began with good intention but I also know it went real bad along the way due to the greed of man.

We have so many good people, doctors & scientists coming forward in truth, even back when vaccinations first came about, who have tried to warn us about the danger of injecting these toxins.

"There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunisation of children does more harm than good."
Dr J Anthony Morris, former Chief Vaccine Control Officer, US Food
and Drug Administration

"The greatest threat of childhood disease lies in the dangerous and
ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation."
Dr R. Mendelsohn, Author and Professor of Paediatrics (How To Raise A Healthy Child In Spite Of Your Doctor)

"In our opinion, there is now sufficient evidence of immune malfunction following current vaccination programmes to anticipate growing public demands for research investigation into alternative methods of prevention of infectious disease."
Dr's H. Buttram and J. Hoffman (Vaccinations and Immune Malfunctions)

"All vaccination has the effect of directing the three values of the blood into or toward the zone characteristics of cancer and leukemia...Vaccines DO predispose to cancer and leukaemia."
Professor L.C. Vincent, Founder of Bioelectronics

"Every vaccine carries certain hazards and can produce inward reactions in some people...in general, there are more vaccine complications than is generally appreciated."
Professor George Dick, London University

"Official data have shown that the large-scale vaccinations undertaken in the US have failed to obtain any significant improvement of the diseases against which they were supposed to provide protection."
Dr A. Sabin, developer of the Oral Polio vaccine (lecture to Italian doctors in Piacenza, Italy, Decemebr 7th 1985)

"In addition to the many obvious cases of mortality from these practises, there are also long-term hazards which are almost impossible to estimate accurately...the inherent danger of of all vaccine procedures should be a deterrent to their unnecessary or unjustifiable use."
Sir Graham Wilson (The Hazards of Immunisation)

"Laying aside the very real possibility that the various vaccines are
contaminated with animal viruses and may cause serious illness later in life (multiple sclerosis, cancer, leukaemia, etc) we must consider whether the vaccines really work for their intended purpose."
Dr W.C. Douglas (Cutting Edge, May 1990)

"The only wholly safe vaccine is a vaccine that is never used"
Dr James A. Shannon, National Institute of Health, USA

With reference to Smallpox;

"Vaccination is a monstrosity, a misbegotten offspring of error and
ignorance, it should have no place in either hygiene or medicine...Believe not in vaccination, it is a world-wide delusion, an unscientific practise, a fatal superstition with consequences measured today by tears and sorrow without end."
Professor Chas Rauta, University of Perguia, Italy , (New York Medical Journal July 1899)

"Vaccination does not protect, it actually renders its subjects more
susceptible by depressing vital power and diminishing natural resistance, and millions of people have died of smallpox which they contracted after being vaccinated."
Dr J.W. Hodge (The Vaccination Superstition)

"It is nonsense to think that you can inject pus - and it is usually from the pustule end of the dead smallpox victim … it is unthinkable that you can inject that into a little child and in any way improve its health. What is true of vaccination is exactly as true of all forms of serum immunisation, if we could by any means build up a natural resistance to disease through these artificial means, I would applaud it to the echo, but we can't do it."
Dr William Howard Hay (lecture to Medical Freedom Society, June 25th 1937)

"Immunisation against smallpox is more hazardous than the disease itself."
Professor Ari Zuckerman, World Health Organisation

With reference to Whooping Cough;

"There is no doubt in my mind that in the UK alone some hundreds, if not thousands of well infants have suffered irreparable brain damage needlessly and that their lives and those of their parents have been wrecked in consequence."
Professor Gordon Stewart, University of Glasgow (Here's Health, March 1980)

"My suspicion, which is shared by others in my profession, is that the
nearly 10,000 SIDS deaths that occur in the US each year are related to one or more of the vaccines that are routinely given to children. The pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine is the most likely villain , but it could also be one or more of the others."
Dr R Mendelsohn, Author and Professor of Paediatrics (How To Raise A Healthy Child In Spite Of Your Doctor)

"The worst vaccine of all is the whooping cough vaccine...it is responsible for a lot of deaths and for a lot of infants suffering irreversible brain damage.."
Dr Archie Kalokerinos, Author and Vaccine Researcher (Natural Health Convention, Stanwell Tops, NSW, Australia 1987)

With reference to Polio;

"Many here voice a silent view that the Salk and Sabin polio vaccine, being made of monkey kidney tissue has been directly responsible for the major increase in leukaemia in this country."
Dr F. Klenner, Polio Researcher, USA

"No batch of vaccine can be proved to be safe before it is given to
children"
Surgeon General Leonard Scheele (AMA Convention 1955, USA)

"Live virus vaccines against influenza and paralytic polio, for example, may in each instance cause the disease it is intended to prevent..."
Dr Jonas Salk, developer of first polio vaccine (Science 4/4/77 Abstracts)

Those who imagine that this liquidation of a person’s work from the record is a novel technique invented solely for the use of pharmaceutical companies in relation to Dr Wakefield, should take a look at the shenanigans that surrounded the 1985 Australian Royal Commission on Agent Orange and dioxin on Australian personnel during the Vietnam War. [1] Agent Orange was a herbicide dropped by the US and their allies on forested areas of Vietnam so as to expose insurgent fighters and groups. Agent Orange contained dioxin in large quantities. Shortly after involvement in dropping Agent Orange in Vietnam, US and Australian troops and even the dogs used by the military showed serious adverse reaction to the chemical. The Vietnamese are still having to cope with familial genetic damage caused by Agent Orange forty years later.

The Australian Royal commission was from the start a ‘get-up’. Two Swedish doctors, Lennart Hardell and Olaf Axelson, had some years before the commission managed to get dioxin-based herbicides banned in Sweden. Hardell gave evidence to the Royal Commission but he paid dearly for this privilege. The judge’s final verdict that there was no evidence that exposure to Agent Orange, including TCDD (Dioxin), was a health hazard turned out to be an almost verbatim account of a Monsanto submission on the issue.

Where basically the post has nothing to do with your comment, here is the text of the post that describes how Wakefield has started his own journal to republish his paper. People reading your posating here might be interested in your comments and how they were responded to at LB/RB:

The Lancet is one of the medical community’s premier journals. As such, tetting a paper into such a journal is a big accomplishment for any medical researcher. When Dr. Andrew Wakefield chose to submit his 1998 study to The Lancet, it is likely he wanted to put it in as high a profile journal as possible. One can speculate how the Andrew Wakefield of 1998 would have viewed publishing his work in Medical Veritas, a newer journal which, well, is not generally highly regarded. Somehow, this observer thinks Dr. Wakefield would not have welcomed a suggestion to submit to Medical Veritas had it existed at the time.

Frequent readers to LeftBrainRightBrain, or most places autism is discussed for that matter, will know that Dr. Wakefield’s study has been retracted by the editors at The Lancet.

Frequent readers here may be also familiar with the magazine, Medical Veritas as it has been the home for a number of questionable autism/vaccine articles. If you aren’t familiar with Medical Veritas, let’s just say that Medical Veritas is not in the same league as the Lancet, to put it mildly.

Why bring these two very disparate journals into this blog post? Well, Medical Veritas has offered to republish Dr. Wakefield’s study:

So with zero confidence in The Lancet, Dr. Horton, those paying his salary, and those criticizing him for his actions, Medical Veritas editors are inviting Dr. Wakefield to re-publish his controversial paper in their next issue.

Wow. What a strange move, and on so many fronts. The most obvious being—what sort of standards does Medical Veritas show when it is willing to publish a paper that has been found to be so fatally flawed? It is really hard to consider that this offer was serious. The Royal Free Hospital, Dr. Wakefield’s employer, assigned the copyright to his paper to The Lancet. The study, even retracted, likely remains the property of The Lancet. Also, it isn’t Dr. Wakefield’s right to decide for his coauthors whether to submit to another journal.

The strangeness goes on and on. Let me just pick out one more oddity of this offer by “the editors” of Medical Veritas. Dr. Wakefield is one of the editors. Yes, one read is that Dr. Wakefield has basically invited himself to reprint “his” paper in Medical Veritas.

Just when you thought the story of the Wakefied/Lancet paper couldn’t get stranger.

The Lancet is among 2,000 science journals published by the Reed-Elsevier-ChoicePoint conglomerate. The UK-based company sells more than 250,000 articles annually. Through its vast network of publications, combined with ChoicePoint's "intelligence services," control over scientific knowledge and medical practices are certain and have become disastrous. Medical intelligence and health practices have been monopolized and corrupted to the detriment of world health and every doctor and patient.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/21/reed-elsevier-buys-choice_n_87842.html
ChoicePoint was purchased by Reed-Elsevier in 2008 for $3.6 billion in cash. The conglomerate is a "prime intelligence service" supplying governments and multinational corporations with genetic and demographic data, including confidential social security numbers and voter records. The company is best known for administering the corrupted data used to certify George Bush' s contested 2000 presidential election.

Reed-Elsevier's archives contain seven million publications read by doctors and scientists whose faith in their "intelligence" is fundamental to every aspect of public policy and governmental decision-making. The impact of this corruption of information, censored studies, and promoted pseudoscience, is shocking. Social progress in general, and public health policies in particular, are sabotaged by this breach of faith, ethical misconduct, and manipulation of basic knowledge needed to serve humanity in every way.

Elsevier issued a statement last week acknowledging that its Australian office had created paid-for compilations “that were made to look like medical journals and lacked the proper disclosures” of their drug company sponsors and calling such practices “unacceptable.” A company spokesman said Elsevier believed that one of the Merck issues was distributed to 20,000 doctors in Australia while other issues went to about 10,000 doctors.

why you really can't rely on your so-called respected journals..........ghostwriting, biased research done by those with pHARMa links and more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/business/11ghost.html
Ghostwriting Is Called Rife in Medical Journals
ix of the top medical journals published a significant number of articles in 2008 that were written by ghostwriters, according to a study released Thursday by editors of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

7.6 percent in The Lancet

The reprint and journal supplement revenue combined with the vast revenue from pharmaceutical advertising has created a dangerous dependence between industry and the medical societies that own the journals. Editors from several top medical journals have expressed alarm over these relationships. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, has written that journals "have evolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry" (Horton, 2004). Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal and chief executive of BMJ Publishing, echoes this complaint that medical journals have become a marketing arm of the pharmaceutical industry (Smith, 2005)

“The pharmaceutical industry relies on ghost-written publications in peer-reviewed journals as part of their marketing plans,” said Fugh-Berman. “Physicians rely on information in the medical literature to make treatment decisions, so hidden sponsorship of articles—and lectures at medical conferences—is not only unethical, but can compromise patient care.”

In her commentary, Dr. Fugh-Berman reports that she was approached by a medical education company working for a well-known pharmaceutical manufacturer. The company asked her to lend her name as “author” to a completed manuscript that reviewed herb-warfarin interactions. The pharmaceutical manufacturer was developing a competitor to warfarin and had apparently commissioned the article to highlight problems with warfarin.

Fugh-Berman says that the true sponsorship of articles is often fuzzy because pharmaceutical companies hire medical education companies to act as intermediaries with researchers. She says that the current voluntary standards for declaring conflicts of interest to readers of medical journals and audiences at medical conferences are inadequate, and that a public database detailing physicians’ and researchers’ conflicts of interest is needed.

Brian Deer, the journalist who tendered the initial complaint to the General Medical Council, has described himself on his web site as a journalist who investigated claims made by parents of vaccine damaged children. He has written a number of articles in defense of vaccines manufactured by GSK and had been aided in his research into Dr Wakefield by Medico Legal Investigations, a company that is completely funded by the Pharmaceutical Industry. There are clearly matters of conflict of interest even in the initial stages of the prosecution.

In 2004, the High Court Judge Sir Nigel Davis, in a closed hearing, rejected the appeals made on behalf of vaccine damaged children whose legal aid had been withdrawn for a coming court case, which would ultimately represent some 2,000 cases. Weeks after this decision had been made, it was reported that the Judge had failed to disclose that his brother was a non-executive board director of GSK, defendants in the case. The case had been in progress for nearly ten years and was only months away from it's hearing in the High Court. The science lobby groups funded by the drug companies and especially Lord Dick Taverne the founder of Sense About Science and previously a major PR handmaiden for the pharmaceutical industry had campaigned heavily to get legal aid taken from the parents. After it was publicized about the conflict of interest, Brian Deer accused him of being 'cruel' to
the scions of the Davis family.

During Dr Wakefield's defense case the fact that Richard Horton's line manager at the Lancet, the Director of the Elsevier publishing company, was also a non executive director of GlaxoSmithKline, was reinforced. Dr Horton gave evidence claiming that Dr Wakefield had failed to provide him with evidence of his conflict of interest in relation to money that the Legal Aid Board had granted the Royal Free Hospital. This evidence did not seem to coincide with the historical record. Dr Horton made no declaration at the beginning of his evidence that he was on speaking terms with one of the GSK directors or indeed that such a person acted as his line manager at the Lancet.

Dr Kumar is the Chair of the GMC fitness to practice panel that heard the case of Dr Wakefield, Professor Walker-Smith and Professor Simon Murch. Kumar has numerous financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry including stock holdings with Glaxo, the manufacturer of the MMR.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the incidence of serious neurologic disorders in a comparative examination
between MMR vaccine and a vaccine control group. The
Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database was
analyzed for the incidence rate of permanent brain damage, cerebellar
ataxia, autism and mental retardation reported following
MMR vaccine and diphtheria, tetanus and whole-cell pertussis
(DTwcP) containing-vaccines from 1994 through 2000 in the US.
Statistically significant increases in the incidence of serious neurologic disorders following pediatric MMR vaccine in comparison to
DTwcP vaccine were found. The potentially globally destructive effects of natural measles, mumps and rubella infections means that
continued vaccination is necessary, but improvements in MMR vaccines
are needed to improve its safety. Int Pediatr. 2003;18(2):203-208.

I have doubts about you being one of those who purposley works to stifle us from telling the truth. I think you realy believe all you have been brainwashed in. I have hope you will wake up & unlike many, actually research the information we send to you & help us. I don't think you're one in the pockets of those who pay others to taint anything alternative that would disrupt their greedy life styles.

Some, no, many of our comments would be deleted if you were one out to slay anything that threatens the corporat big boys like big pHARMa.

"Finally, what convinces me most of all that this is a minor stumbling block for us in the autism community and that the controversy will continue as heated as ever, is the fact that none of us or our children are going away. Vilifying Andrew Wakefield isn’t going to stop us. Pretending that it does, is a joke.

Unless and until health officials can point to independently done studies disproving a link, the war will continue, unabated.

Where is research that we’ve demanded for years?

I personally promise to go quietly away if anyone can come up with an actual study comparing autism rates in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations of children and show me there is no difference.

I will never write another word on this topic if someone produces a study looking at regressive autism and can tell me what changed these children so suddenly that they lost learned skills. This is the research the former head of the National Institutes Health, Dr. Bernadine Healy, called for on CBS News in 2008.

I want to see a study showing us adults with autism just like we see in our children. I don’t want to hear about a study where researchers talked to possible autistic adults on the phone. I want to see the same signs of classic autism among adults that kids have.

If officials can’t produce these studies, no one, including Dr. Schaffner, has the right to say that vaccines “are out of the picture.” "

Bill,
I tried to step back from this specific example for a minute and consider in a larger picture of various things that have reported in the press in a short-hand or scientific digest form, the points of view, and how they've panned out/are panning out in the long view.

Controversy has an emotional component, and controversies as fanned by notoriety are not unique,

This thread is stuck on the MMR imbroglio, but it is an example of similar which may not have been as heady because of being preinternet or not as immediate to as large a group of people. When is the argument scientific or rhetorical?

I think the larger picture of why these develop, whether they stay or go as part of the public discourse, and the main topic of how does/does the media play an aiding and abetting role in creating controversy is the one that is interesting - as is whether scientists in the general sense consistently hold themselves aloof from participation, perhaps have a misunderstanding of the rules of the game from the public perspective or sometimes use it to promote a particular point of view (sometimes intentionally and sometimes perhaps with those human desires for a little bit of celebrity)? This is posed in the general case (and I imagine has been studied by those interested in the topic of media and journalism). Are any of your citations relevant to that general case?

"Thanks for the comment Regina. Some sanity in this sea of not so sane."

You know, these kind of condescending, dismissive remarks certainly do not shed a good light on you and your practice.

Many of us here have done extensive research and you just dismiss our posts as part of a 'sea of not so sane'.

I was trained allopathically as a pediatric nurse, graduating in 1971.
What I saw over that next decade of the 80s caused me to question a lot and look for answers to things I was never taught in my quality nursing program. I took to medical libraries to start researching.

And of course with the advent of the internet, it made a lot much easier.

So you can be dismissive, but it shows a lot more about you than it does me (and others on here).

Well, I'm not going to make any sweeping claims about my sanity, but thanks for the pointer to that blogpost by Amy Tuteur- that's very timely and appreciated because I was musing over that particular study with some folks yesterday and correlation between popular press and the research article itself, as well as preceding work, and whether the most direct statement is necessarily the most accurate or fairly representative.

I need to look at that post more carefully because besides the people picking up on wire service there is the matter of institutional releases, and one that seems to happen a lot - being quoted out of context. Thanks.

So many here have the right to express their views, whether contrasting to anothers' perspective or in agreement with them.
There is no doubt that there are many important perspectives, regarding the angles raised here, to be considered, analyzed, discussed and shared.
One thing to keep in mind is, I feel, to clearly ascertain the differences between an individual for whom Autism is an intrinsic part of their being (e.g. genetics) and for the individuals who, perhaps because of the affectation of an environmental onslaught of some kind, contributes to the display or presentation of autistic characteristics (e.g. behaviours).
A balanced perspective, an open mind and a true willingness to consider all points of view (even all the studies conducted - whether ethical or not, accurate or not, qualitative or not, and so on) is imperative to achieving true knowledge.
It is true that some individuals (whether they be scientists/researchers or the even unsung enquiring mind who quietly goes about researching all the information available, as well as trusting their own instincts - whether because of personal experience and/or just an amazing ability to just 'know') have been prematurely 'shut-down' by the ones with the loudest 'voice' or the most to lose ($?), have a closed mind or reel at the thought of being challenged in their views. It doesn't mean that the one with the loudest 'voice', for example, really has a firm grasp on the reality of a situation/issue.
So as to not become self-serving, narrowminded, ignorant of the global picture, paralyzed in our own 'holding-pattern' of confirmed beliefs, we must respectfully 'listen' to all aspects or avenues of information. Some views will be right on the mark and some will be away with the fairies. Many will have honorable intentions and some want their 15 minutes of fame (sometimes at the cost of another).
There are many persons who just want make a change to benefit an autistic persons' (Autism collective community); there are those who may be eyeing off the next Nobel Prize; there are those who want to right wrongs; the intentions, therefore can be numerous.....

A little challenge for our thinking here - Ask yourself (no one individual being 'spoken to' here) what your intentions are towards the Autistic community (and their carers) in persuing answers to the many topics surrounding Autism (generally speaking).
Eg. Do you want to improve the quality of an Autistic persons' life experience and contribute positively?
Do you want to earn a living from it?
Does all that you do, honour the dignity and personhood of the Autistic individual?
Do you just want to make a noise/hear your own voice?
Do you have a genuine compassion and concern for the proper, ethical and humane treatment of all humans?
Are you really passionate about righting perceived or actual wrongs?
And so on.............

I feel that vaccs. have prevented/averted much human disaster. I also feel that there may be complications resulting from the components of the vaccs. Sometimes, as with many other important scenarios, 'man' can be damned if 'he/she' does, or damned if 'he/she' doesn't. It is a complex situation.

I don't see too much of a rip-roaring debate here, jsut an important need to share information, deal with the facts and reach for the truth in all things.

This reply to Autism News Beat, who earlier said Helen Keller's deafblindness was caused by measles. Not true. According to her biographers, she was struck at age 19 months by "an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis"
Btw, when I get email notifications about your many replies to my comment, it brings me back to your article, not the reply, and i have to wade through the comments to find it. Rather time consuming, sorry.

Would you call me lazy and sloppy for being a mom of an autistic son who intentionally tells people to beware of vaccines? My guess is yes.

Well, maybe I'm not the only lazy and sloppy one here. The last sentence of your article was sloppy, not only grammatically, but in message. And I quote:

"Not doing the investigative end of journalism is lazy and the results of sloppy reporting that then appears in the media is just as culpable as those intentionally propagating the vaccines cause autism myth."

In your article, "The Autism-Vaccines Myth: The Impact of the Media," (a very sweeping title, by the way), and in your last sentence, you feel entitled to say that it is a myth that vaccines cause autism.

Why do you feel entitled to comment on all vaccines when you only parroted some studies about the MMR vaccine being safe? I consider that to be sloppy logic.

If you feel you have the right to comment about vaccines in general, why don't you respond to the September, 2009 issue of the Journal Annals of Epidemiology, where a study by Carolyn Gallagher and Melody Goodman of the Graduate Program in Public Health at Stony Brook University Medical Center, NY, led them to write that, "Boys who received the hepatitis B vaccine during the first month of life had 2.94 greater odds for ASD compared to later- or unvaccinated boys."

Why don't you respond to the visual evidence offered by Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, in thier short video entitled "How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration"?http://commons.ucalgary.ca/mercury/

Some other questions: What are the names of the studies "prove" that MMR isn't related to autism? What was actually researched in these studies? Did they research every ingredient of the MMR vaccine? Or only one? We will never know from this article why you are a such a faithful follower the MMR vaccine.

Another one of my favorite quotes from your article, Brian, is: "Another typical tactic of the media is to present controversial topics as if there are two, equally relevant sides to the story." I'm wondering what you're getting at here. Why would it bother you to equally present both sides of a story? Perhaps I'm archaically attached to the Disputational Method, a method of Justice that has formed our journalism and juridsprudence system, which says that the truth is best found by presenting the best argument from two opposing opinions. It seems you find it more enlighten to unequally present two sides of an argument? Or perhaps we should only present evidence in favor of one side of an argument, and just simply state that the other side is wrong? What do you call that, the propaganda style of journalism?

Bill, my advice is to worry first about the sloppy, lazy plank in your eye, before you worry about the speck in mine.

The women posting here under the guise of autism moms are simply reps working for Homeopath and Chiropractic medicine. Don't take them so seriously. They will never change their point of view (their income depends on it) and they are posting simply to scare people away from modern medicine and back toward the dark ages of herbal tonics, mysterious Chinese remedies, and praying to a deity to not get ill.

Thanks for the heads up. I've seen several of the commenters before on Age of Autism and other forums that are less than reputable. I'm not going to censor anyone unless they explicitly try to sell something here (even if it was a behavioral practitioner). I know some of their ideas are harmful but I feel that some of the best evidence that these notions are bogus is to let their proponents speak freely.

I'm currently working on a post that I'll probably put up tomorrow on a completely boring and non vaccine-related topic, stereotypic behavior.

Dear Anonymous,
I am a real mom of children with Autism.
I am a Professional too, who has put her private practice 90% on hold to full time care for my children and home school one of my brood.
I write here and for a couple of Autism (international) magazines for free currently. I also counsel, here and there, out of the goodness of my heart, not for profit, but for a genuine passion for caring about my genuine and very real interest in and life involving Autism on a daily basis.
So I am here under no guise - am not posing to be someone I am not. I don't aim to gain anything here, financially or otherwise. I only hope to be part of an important discussion and equally share in the many ideas and aspects of this 'threads' topic.
Do your homework, click on the links (to personal websites) attached to those of us here who have provided them and you will discover your statement (above) is incorrect, as I speak for myself, regarding myself.
Thankyou.

Doctors who sell expensive supplements from their offices, as well as chiropractors, and various and sundry quacks use shills to promote fear of evidence based medicine. The are very selfish and greedy individuals who care not for how unvaccinated children suffer and are in dire risk of dying or being maimed by diseases like tetanus, rubella, polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough... they want their reward up-front and don't care otherwise. The parents who have convinced themselves that vaccines caused their children's autism live in denial of their own genetic and lifestyle contributions to their child's condition, and fear that others will see how flawed they are as humans...as narcissists and borderlines, I believe they are driven to blame others at any cost.

You, Bill, are obviously working with very different people labeled with autsim, than I work with and know.............
Aspergers is very different from the autistic children I know and even higher functioning autism is very different from the extremly low functioning children I know............

apples and oranges............

Proposed Autism Diagnosis Changes.................
and if this happens.........well.......it will even be worse

U.S. psychiatrists are revising the manual they use to diagnose mental illness. One proposal would eliminate Asperger's as a separate diagnosis and group it in a single autism spectrum disorders category.

Many people with Asperger's call themselves Aspies and view their condition as their identity. They don't think of themselves as autistic.

They are no different than the ones I work with and I would speculate that I've worked with as wide of a range of people with ASDs as could be worked with, to revisit the topic, including some with GI problems. It's just that these are pretty infrequent (unless we are talking about constipation secondary to delayed toileting or selective food intake) in ASDs compared to some other pediatric populations I've worked with (e.g., CP). I've also worked with the full range of intellectual capabilities. I'm completely neutral with respect to the merging or separating of Asperger's from the rest of the spectrum. It won't change the fact that they are related disorders with, at least in the majority of cases, a genetic origin.

I'll be abandoning this thread with my next post which I'll put up tomorrow so you guys (gender-neutral term) can continue to post your links but I won't be keeping any comments on the next thread that rehash this topic. Any comments relevant to that post will be appreciated.

And the increased prevalence is largely due to adjustments in diagnostic criteria, diagnostic substitution, increased awareness, and increased survelliance. I'm sure you'll not agree with this because it is really due to big pharma and I'm part of that great conspiracy. That said, there is no question that there are more persons with autism than we ever thought and the need for resources (educational/clinical) is greater than has been acknowledged.

And the increased prevalence is largely due to adjustments in diagnostic criteria, diagnostic substitution, increased awareness, and increased survelliance. I'm sure you'll not agree with this because it is really due to big pharma and I'm part of that great conspiracy. That said, there is no question that there are more persons with autism than we ever thought and the need for resources (educational/clinical) is greater than has been acknowledged.

Remember that autism as a diagnostic label is a creation. It is likely that autistic behaviors originate like all behaviors: from contingencies in the environment that maintain those behaviors.

We are much too quick to blame everything on genetics. It is counter to what we know about genetics. A genetic code contains no blueprints for behavior. It is more like a recipe. Perhaps certain genetic sequences could increase the likelihood of autistic behaviors in some way either directly or indirectly. But you can't make the argument that all the behavioral differences between someone who is autistic and someone who is not is genetic. That would be a huge amount of genetic code we are talking about not a tiny marker or section.

A genetic etiology of autism does little to explain the increase in diagnosis of autism.

My contention is that it is environmental factors determining whether a child becomes autistic or not. But these factors are not vaccines or heavy metal toxicity.

The problem is that human beings are not perfect. From that simple fact we can extrapolate that parents are not perfect in their parenting. An accidental series of reinforcements could easily lead to a child exhibiting autistic behaviors of varying strengths (the autistic spectrum).

Parents may balk at such a proposal but a parent would be no more at fault for a child developing autistic behaviors than the parent of a child with cancer.

Changes in our society and in our parenting behaviors could explain the increase in autism diagnosis.

It is a theory that nobody likes or wants to talk about but one that should be considered.

It has been considered and dispensed with (see Bettelheim), but perhaps that's an extreme example. Is it possible that you're referencing Malott and Drash?

Is it possible that typical parenting might not represent the most effective route to working with children who have a trajectory of developing ASD or create problematic contingencies for someone with different wiring? Well, I believe so because otherwise we would not have to invoke specialized strategies of instruction to kick start some of those joint attention, social referencing and language skills. It's also clear that in typical children we get cut a lot of slack to be somewhat loose in considering the functional contingencies.

But as a primary source of etiology? Just observing families that have multiple children with only one ending up as diagnosed on the spectrum would suggest that that's fallacious, and there's a potential of other contributors.

I would argue that genetics does suggest a blueprint for at least some behavior else respondent and physiological behavior would depend on operant conditioning.

"A genetic etiology of autism does little to explain the increase in diagnosis of autism."
But an epigenetic one might and that's the way that the research seems to be headed.

You are entitled to your opinion of course. But may I inform you that Autism is heavily present in each generation of my childrens' fathers' side of the family. Genetically based.
Many families, where Autism presents itself as an intrinsic part of a family member, discover a history (generational), immediate and distant, of Autism (in its' truest meaning).
I don't blame myself or others one iota for my families genetic presentation/history of Autism. It is part of the mechanics of their genetic inheritance. I respect differing abilities and the being of another. I inherited green eyes; my daughter inherited gorgeous caramel coloured hair; my jolly neighbour inherited his fathers' rotund physique.......and so on.
Bills' last comments (wider diagnostic criteria, awareness and so on) is spot on ;)